Gubu World is an Irishmans view of global affairs. Gubu is an Irish political phrase that stands for grotesque, unbelievable, bizare and unprecendented. Gubu World is a polictical blog that debates international issues of contention. While keeping an eye on events in Ireland we regularly debate developments in Iraq, Iran, Israel and other troubled spots.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008

"W" on Iraq

I saw Oliver Stone's "W" last night and unlike the critics I liked it. In particular I liked the scenes with his cabinet where they were discussing the pros and cons of invading Iraq and afterward why it went wrong. The best scene was one with Dr David Kay who as head of the Iraq Survey Group was responsible for finding the weapons of mass destruction after the invasion. In this scene he is meeting with Bush and the cabinet and has to explain why he has been unable to find any of these weapons. His description of what went wrong is perfect. He makes a vital point surrounding the entire Iraq fiasco that is often missed by the main stream media which is as follows. Sadam Hussein had no WMD's but for some reason he acted like he did. He did play cat and mouse with the weapons inspectors and he did appear like he had something to hide. Why ? The answer as Dr Kay explains to a slack jawed Bush is because he wanted his own people to think that he had. The belief that Sadam possessed biological and chemical weapons was the regimes biggest defence against an internal uprising. Such was Shia and Kurdish fear of a repeat of the gas attack on Halabjah in 1988 that they fell into Sadam's line.

And here in is the greatest tragedy of the Iraq war. If the UN weapons inspectors had been allowed to carry out their work then they would have exposed what we now know to be true which is that Sadam was in fact a weak dictator. By exposing this fact it would have triggered an internal uprising which would have led to his downfall. Half a million people would not have spilled their guts on the streets of Iraq and every Jihadist in the middle east would not have set sail for Iraq to kill as many Americans (eventually succeeding in killing 4000 of them) as they could and we of course would be living today in a safer more stable world. But W saw it differently back in March 03.

I just don't see a load of Bush neocons, generals and CIA officials sitting around discussing how they are going to "secure the oil lines out of Iraq". I always thought the war was primarily about American power and and the belief in the Bush administration that it should be aggressively projected around the world. Iraq was a political experiment to that point.

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About Gubu World

In 1982 Irelands most wanted criminal, a double murderer was arrested in the home of the attorney general whom he was aquainted with socially. The Taoiseach (Irish Prime minister) of the day, Charles Haughey, described the event as being grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecendented. The phrase gubu was born. The creator of this blog believes that gubu is a perfectly appropriate phrase to describe the sequence of global events that have occurred since the outbreak of the second intifada in September 2000 and the present day. This time line incorporates many grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented events such as September 11th, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Iraq war, genocide in Darfur, the Iranian nuclear crisis and the second Lebanon war. Gubu World is committed to instigating intelligent and rational debate in order to make some sense of the madness.

About Me

My name is Ted Leddy. I am a 29 year old Irishman with an intense interest in global affairs, particularly within the Middle East. I am interested in debating with people on the following issues. Israel, Jewish politics, The Israeli Palestinian peace process, Iran and Iraq. I also intend to regularly commentate on the progress of President Obamas presidency keeping a particular eye on his foreign policy.